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MANCHESTER, UK – Rolling, rubbing, poking and caressing: The dance track “Human Measure”, which premiered here earlier this month, is full of bodies touching one another.
Performed by multimedia artist cassils and five other mostly nude dancers, six of whom are not duos, the choreography ranges from sensibly intimate to hedonistically insane. The tone set by low, red lighting and a buzzing, instrumental soundtrack is interrupted by intermittent photo flashes, leaving a blinding retinal burn in their wake: is the viewer seeing too much or is it enough?
To conclude the work, the performers roll the room-size canvas on which they are dancing, carefully wash it in a water pit placed on the stage, then lift it high to show the audience a cyanotype. A white photographic negative on cobalt. The canvas features outlines of bodies, some poignant, some crouching, reminiscent of preserved human figures found at Pompeii.
“Human Measure” is the first contemporary dance work by Cassils to use pronouns. It premiered this month HOUSE, a retrospective of Cassils’ work over the past 10 years, featuring performances, photographs, and videos of her body material, providing a commentary on society’s perspectives on transgender people. “Human Measure” was a collaboration with choreographer Jasmine Albuquerque.
Cassils said the exhibition is an assessment of Cassils’ work at a time when transgender people are more visible in public life than ever before, but their rights are simultaneously being attacked. “I was thinking a lot about finding official language about what it means to be trans and non-binary,” they said in an interview at the gallery.
“We have a lot of media representation on some level,” said Cassils, 46, who was born in Canada and lives in Los Angeles. Still, in the United States under the Trump administration, a significant revocation of rights Transgender people and a set of bills that seek to further limit these rights in certain states. Now, Cassils says, “More than face bills those sitting on state legislatures”and there are dozens of judges appointed by President Trump who have the power to block objections to these bills. Today, Democrats and Republicans continue their work. fierce debate On transgender rights under the Biden administration.
While “Human Measure” is more poetic, Cassils has used their awareness of the cultural climate around her work to inform a few of her recent, overtly political projects. Cassils was co-leader of a coalition of 80 artists last year who used drones to draw attention to messages like “Don’t mind the cages” in water vapor that could be read for miles, in a project called “In Plain Sight.” Widespread detention of immigrants in the United States. During the Trump administration, Cassils collected her own urine for 200 days in protest. roll back bathroom access policies for “angry”
“Cassils has been at the forefront of a wave of artists in recent years that has become more visible in asserting transgender politics in their work,” David Getsy, author of several books on queer art history, said in a telephone interview. “But I think Cassils has consistently understood that visibility is not just cause for celebration, it also carries with it the danger of violence. Visibility becomes an opportunity for surveillance and inspection.”
After growing up in Montreal, Cassils completed her MFA at the California Institute of the Arts and received a 2017 Guggenheim fellowship. Stunts have studied sports medicine and mixed martial arts, and have worked as semi-professional boxers and personal trainers in addition to their artistic career.
Organized in chronological order, the compact retrospective at HOME reframes the study of trans bodies in the artist’s own terms, often drawing on their background in strength training.
The exhibition opens with “Cutouts: A Traditional Sculpture,” where the artist gains a pound of strength a week for 23 weeks and documents the changes in weekly full-length photographs, each monochrome a little bulkier, the curves a little more Schwarzenegger. -esque. The title is Eleanor Antin’s “Carving: A Traditional SculptureConfront the fundamental contradictions in how gender is constructed and understood by mainstream culture.
“Bodybuilding is such a cartoon, extreme performance of masculinity,” Cassils said. “I became more interested in playing with this false incarnation idea, not necessarily trying to approach this perfect masculinity.”
Cassils explained that they’ve always been interested in strength training as a way to “hold on” to their bodies. As a child, Cassils had several surgeries for an undiagnosed gallbladder disease and nearly died as a result of complications. “They thought it was psychosomatic,” Cassils said. “I had the experience of not being listened to by doctors.”
Likewise, when Cassils made “Cuts” in 2011, they felt they had little understanding of trans people who didn’t want gender-affirming surgery or trans people who were neither male nor female. “There was no non-binary, there was no such word,” they said. Ten years later, the time span of retrospective, mainstream recognition of the gender spectrum is very different.
“I really think trans years are like dog years, in some circles there’s a very exponential improvement in vocabulary and understanding,” Cassils said.
Much of Cassils’ previous work is recklessly confrontational: In “Inextinguishable Fire (2007-2015),” the artist sets himself on fire. In a video of the work at HOME, the camera zooms out in slow motion, revealing one by one flames licking the sides of his protective suits. Cassils said that with “Unquenchable Fire” designed during the Iraq war, they aimed to explore the alienating effects on viewers who consume images of traumatized bodies presented in the American news media. “It’s an index of how far we’ve been removed,” they said.
Although the work focuses on Cassils’ own bodily achievement, pieces like “Unquenchable Fire” speak to the possibilities of empathy, said Bren O’Callaghan, the exhibition’s curator. “What seems ultra special is actually the opposite. They are talking to all the bodies that have been discriminated against, they are talking to everyone who has been taken away from their selves,” he said.
After the effects of the Trump administration and the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, Cassils said they were keen to expand a sense of connection in their work.
“I don’t want to scream into the void,” they said. “I want to create beautiful experiences that empower and encourage us to sustain the power of creative action.”
The “Human Measure” was the culmination of this joint effort. The work to make the cyanotype photograph developed as the climax on stage began in June when Cassils invited a group of 26 transgender and non-binary people to lie still on a treated muslin cloth so that the rays of the hot Los Angeles sun would burn their bodies. images to the canvas. “It’s a good moment,” he said, to be vaccinated for the first time since the epidemic began and to hug each other without masks.
Like “Cutouts”, “Human Measure” reappropriates the subjects of art history by playing with Yves Klein’s “title”.anthropometriesThe series in which female models press their naked bodies covered with blue paint to the canvas.
“Instead of using women as passive brand building tools and separating them from agency, what would brand building be like to come from a kind of empowered labor?” said Cassils.
Cassils was excited that the exhibit at HOME was creating a shared moment. On the day of the premiere, they said their Instagram was lit up with queer and gender non-conforming people on trains from all over the UK, making a “pilgrimage” to the gallery to see their work.
The artist’s optimism was also inspired by collaborating with the young non-duo dancers in the work. In the final moment of “Human Measure,” the artist pulls a string on one side of the nude, gigantic cyanotype, while a transgender person 17 years younger does the same, helping them take the heavy pressure off. hangs from the top of the stage.
“We are lifting this burden of representation together,” Cassils said.
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